This invention generally relates to point of purchase display systems that are suitable for use in retail environments. The present invention also relates to processes for assembling the display systems with the articles to be displayed.
Merchandising systems are used in retail stores to display items for sale in an attractive, easy to access and space efficient manner. To be commercially viable, the merchandising systems must meet a number of requirements. Some of the more important requirements are that the merchandisers be inexpensive to manufacture, utilize a minimum amount of labor to load the items onto the merchandiser and occupy little volume during shipment and/or use in the store. Ideally, the merchandiser is fully loaded at the factory with the articles to be sold and then, with little additional effort on the part of the store employee, the loaded merchandiser can be setup in the store.
A variety of merchandising systems that address the above described issues are known. One such system uses hangable strips to display the articles to be sold. However, each strip incurs labor costs associated with securing the articles to the strip. In one example, the strip is a metal rod with clips secured thereto and distributed along the length of the rod. Each package to be sold must be manually secured to a clip. This action requires individual handling of each package thus adding to the final cost of the product.
As disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 6,195,877, a machine can be used to secure the items to be sold to the hang strip. The machine provides a supply of hang strip material and an item attachment station that enables the items to be individually connected to the strip. While the described apparatus is faster than loading the strips by hand, an operator must individually handle each item to be loaded on the strip. Furthermore, the design, construction and maintenance of the machine add to the final cost of loading the product onto the strip.
Another example of a strip merchandiser is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 6,145,675. This strip merchandiser utilizes a tongue and at least one shoulder that protrudes from the surface of the strip to secure the packages to the strip. Unfortunately, the design of the merchandiser requires that the packages be individually loaded on the strip. Thus the cost of loading the strip remains high.
Disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,103,970 is a collapsible display system. The system described therein includes a flexible, fan foldable strip that can be loaded with items to be sold and then collapsed into a compact stack for shipping. As with the other merchandising systems described above, this system requires that each item secured to the strip be individually handled. Thus, the cost of loading the strip must be incurred and passed along to the consumer.
Accordingly, there is a need for a merchandising system that will substantially reduce the cost of loading items to be sold onto a hangable strip by enabling an individual to simultaneously load more than one item at a time onto the strip.